silabs-multiprotocol-builder

Tip

Silabs will be releasing binaries, same as this project intended, with future releases. Archiving this for reference.

Builder for Silabs multiprotocol (Zigbee, OpenThread, Bluetooth Low Energy) components.

Uses Silicon Labs Simplicity SDK and Silicon Labs Configurator (slc) to build binaries and configurations files for supported architectures (arm32, arm64, x86_64). It mimics the official Silicon Labs Multiprotocol Docker container to be able to use the components outside of containers.

The following installation steps have been tested (unless otherwise noted) on Ubuntu 24.04 x64 (VirtualBox) with a Sonoff Dongle-E with this firmware.

Tip

The release archives contain the *.sh scripts in this repository at the time of build. If using the latest release, check for newer versions of the scripts here and replace them as needed.

Pre-setup

This step extracts the previously downloaded archive in its own folder and runs the necessary local adjustments to the newly extracted files, including possible customization.

tar xf silabs-multiprotocol-components-ARCH.tar.xz --one-top-level
cd silabs-multiprotocol-components-ARCH
sudo chmod +x ./pre-setup.sh
sudo ./pre-setup.sh

Important

Replace ARCH with the arch of the downloaded archive.

Parameters

• --device-path DEVICE_PATH
  • The path to your physical adapter.
  • Default: /dev/ttyACM0.
• --baudrate BAUDRATE
  • The baudrate of your RCP firmware.
  • Default: 460800.
• --hardware-flow HARDWARE_FLOW
  • The flow control of your RCP firmware (sw or rtscts=false should set this to false).
  • Default: true.
• --disable-encryption DISABLE_ENCRYPTION
  • See CPCd configuration below.
  • Default: true.
• --disable-conflict-services DISABLE_CONFLICT_SERVICES
  • Automatically disables conflicting services on your machine when set to true. Note: This is false by default as that may alter your current machine's state in an undesirable way. Check script/_disable_services for details on what may be conflicting if you wish to do it manually.
  • Default: false.
• --zigbeed-iid ZIGBEED_IID
  • The zigbeed process interface id (iid) which is used to differentiate between multiple networks using the same RCP. The iid must be set to a value between 1 and 3 and must be unique for each host process using the multi-PAN 802.15.4 RCP.
  • Default: 1.
• --otbr-iid OTBR_IID
  • Same as above, for OTBR process.
  • Default: 2.

Example

This is the default if no parameter given:

sudo ./pre-setup.sh --device-path /dev/ttyACM0 --baudrate 460800 --hardware-flow true --disable-encryption true --disable-conflict-services false --zigbeed-iid 1 --otbr-iid 2

Installing an RCP firmware on your adapter.

These components currently require an RCP firmware version 2024.6.1. You can find some experimental builds here: https://github.com/Nerivec/silabs-firmware-builder/releases/tag/v2024.6.1

rcp-uart-802154-blehci => with BLE support.

rcp-uart-802154 => without BLE support (you won't be able to use the BLE components).

Install

This step installs the requested components and sets up any startup requirements.

sudo chmod +x ./install.sh
sudo ./install.sh

Parameters

By default (without parameters), the script only installs cpcd (required for all others), use the parameters below to install the components you want.

• --zigbeed
  • Install zigbeed components.
• --otbr
  • Install otbr components.
• --ot-cli
  • Install ot-cli components.
• --ble
  • Install ble components.
• --skip-cpcd
  • Skip installation of cpcd components (useful if you want to launch the script in multiple steps to install components one at a time).
• --all
  • Takes precedence over --skip-cpcd if supplied after it, doesn't if before it.
• --infra-if-name INFRA_IF_NAME
  • Interface name (for OTBR), usually eth0 or enp0s3.
  • Default: return value of ip -o -4 route show to default | awk '{print $5}'.

Important

The install.sh script should take care of detecting already installed components and skip unnecessary/undesired steps. You may need to adjust it if you want to customize the behavior.

Tip

Restarting your machine after installing the components of your choice (below) should allow enabled services to start in the proper order automatically.

CPCd

Base communication protocol for RCP support.

Configuration

Location: /usr/local/etc/cpcd.conf

Note

Setting disable_encryption to false requires a firmware built with encryption enabled too.

zigbeed

Add ZigBee support.

Configuration

Location: /usr/local/etc/zigbeed.conf

Note

Adjust ezsp-interface if you modify the socat configuration below.

Socat Configuration

Location: /etc/systemd/system/zigbeed-socat.service

Tip

To connect to zigbeed from your ZigBee application, use the path configured in that file. Default is: /dev/ttyZigbeeNCP.

TCP

Warning

Untested

To use TCP instead, you can change the default socat command to something like this:

ExecStart=/usr/bin/socat -v tcp-l:9627,reuseaddr,fork pty,link=/tmp/ttyZigbeeNCP,raw

Then you can use 127.0.0.1:9627 in your ZigBee application (in whatever IP/port format required). Check other socat tutorials to configure the TCP part as needed.

OTBR

Warning

OTBR setup is very intricate, and might require manual editing of the scripts used to install all the requirements if your setup varies slightly. Beware, it also modifies several parts of the system to allow it to work (networking & co).

Add OpenThread support.

Start utilities

See https://openthread.io/reference/cli/commands and https://openthread.io/guides/border-router/tools for more details.

ot-ctl

ot-cli

sudo /usr/local/bin/ot-cli 'spinel+cpc://cpcd_0?iid=2&iid-list=0'

Tip

Check the --otbr-iid saved in pre-setup-run.conf from when you ran pre-setup.sh (above command uses default).

ot-fct

See README.md for more details.

pskc

steering-data

BLE

Add Bluetooth Low Energy support.

Start utilities

Bluetooth CLI utility:

sudo bluetoothctl

View traffic:

sudo btmon

Troubleshooting

Use journalctl to get more information if a service is misbehaving or just to check the logs:

sudo journalctl -fexu cpcd
sudo journalctl -fexu zigbeed-socat
sudo journalctl -fexu zigbeed
sudo journalctl -fexu otbr-agent
sudo journalctl -fexu otbr-web
sudo journalctl -fexu cpc-hci-bridge
sudo journalctl -fexu hciattach
sudo journalctl -fexu bluetooth

Tip

If you get issues with some services that have not started after boot, see if something takes too long and prevents others from starting, like the serial path becoming available (might need to adjust sleep times in systemd services or use similar mechanisms).